Made Free by the Son of God
“If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed: and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free... If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”
John viii. 31, 32, 36.
NEW invention has lately been announced to the world, by which it is possible to cleanse the smoke of our great cities, impregnated not only with carbon, but with other deleterious products. In the shaft of some great chimney, or in connection with the funnel of a railway engine, a cistern half full of water is arranged, into which the smoke is drawn through a narrow valve. The smoke being sucked into the cistern is compelled to pass through the water, and leaves there not only the black soot, but also the other products which are destructive of life. And after the process is complete, it escapes back into the chimney purified, colourless, odourless, and, to a large extent, innocuous. But the water is almost fetid, charged as it is with Ink and poison. One may dare to imagine how glad the smoke itself must be to be freed from that which made it harmful to men, to pursue its glad way now into the upper air. And here surely is an illustration of how sinful souls, laden with crime and with the deleterious products of evil, may be made free by the Son of God, “loosed from their sins” (as the R.v. puts it, Rev. i. 5) “in his blood.”
We have nothing to do with the origin of sin. That lies far beyond our ken. Nor can we tell the ultimate out-working of sin in those ages which are yet to be; except that we know that its course will be determined by the limits raised by the infinite justice, the infinite holiness, and the infinite love of God. But we find ourselves and all mankind tainted, blighted, and condemned; accosted, from our ven*’ cradle, with tears and pain and the sweat of toil, and the certainty of death, which has passed upon all men, for that all men have sinned. Oh, blessed announcement that God our Father has taken our part against our sin, and, in the person of his Son, has come to make us free, that we may be free indeed!
Szn blinds us. — Never did men utter a more barefaced lie than when those Jews exclaimed: “We were never in bondage to any man.” Never in bondage! Had they forgotten the long and bitter bondage of Egypt, commemorated annually by the Passover? Or the dreary captivity of seventy years in Babylon, the memory of which lingered in the most plaintive odes of the Psalter? From that very Temple court, could they not see the Roman standard floating over the ancient palace of their kings, and hear the bugle-call regulating the movements of the victorious Roman soldiery, whilst Roman officials met them at every turn.’’ They could not have forgotten all this; but, in their pride, they wilfully shut their eyes to distasteful truths. Thus prejudice blinds men. “The eyes of their understanding are darkened.” And just as some virulent disease attacks the eyes, by which alone its ravages upon the human frame can be discerned, so does sin rob us of the power of self-knowledge. The ungodly man needs to be convinced of sin. The young Christian permits many things which, in the growing light of coming years, he will be the first to condemn. They who pursue most eagerly the upward path, in proportion as they behold the glory and the purity of God, abhor themselves and repent. But foi all that, it is certain that we should never have formed a true conception of what sin is, with our enfeebled vision, and in the murky atmosphere of this world, had it not been that God had shown us its true character in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. That agony and bloody sweat, that cross and passion, constitute the only true gauge of the enormity and exceeding sinfulness of sin.
Sin enslaves us. — Here is one of the profoundest sentences ever spoken by our Lord. Men had not been wont to count themselves slaves. They were in the habit of thinking that they could take up sin, or lay it down, at their will — that they were its masters. Christ, however, has shown us that it is not so; but that, every time we yield to sin, we increase its hold “^Erbints” anb ‘’ (Kijilbvm.” 175
over us, and become more deeply enthralled under its tyrannous power, so that we are compelled to obey its behests, however cruel or malignant they may be. “He that committeth sin is the servant of sin.”
Bui sin ts not a necessary part of our being. — This comes out so clearly in these remarkable words: “The servant abideth not in the house for ever.” This, of course, is an obvious truth. There is a great difference between the relation of your child and your servant. Your child is an integral part of the household. He has been born in it, has become part of it; and, however far he travels, he is one with it by a tie which defies the gnawing tooth of time and the growing distance of long journeying. It is different with a servant. Especially under the provisions of the Levitical law, it was impossible for the servant to abide in the house for ever. His slavery was limited in its duration to the amount of debt he had to work off. The trumpet of jubilee, ringing out its welcome notes, bade the slave go free. In like manner, however long a man may have served sin, and however tightly he may be held in its meshes, yet it has no necessary right over him; he need not abide for ever, he is but a slave in a tyrant’s household, who, at any moment, may go free.
How this truth must thrill the hearts of some who read these words! For long they have been sighing under bondage, compared with which that of Egypt was light; they have bitterly cried, “Who shall deliver us?” they have thought that there was no release from their bitter bondage; and their tyrant-master has whispered, mockingly, “Mine for ever!” But let these know that sin is an intruder, a usurper, an alien influence other than God meant in his original making of men. The prison walls need not be perpetual. The chain need not be eternal. The house may be left for ever, never to be darkened again by those who have groaned within its precincts.
Freedom from the tyranny of sin must come to us from without. The slave cannot free himself. He cannot scale those walls, pick those locks, elude that tyrant. Resolutions cannot do it, nor prayers, nor tears. Every struggle only tightens the noose. The slave must be made free. Hence the mission of the Son of God. Himself free, He came into our prison-house, put his Divine Person under the conditions induced by our sins — as Theseus sailed in the ship with the yearly tribute of Athenian youth to the dread monster of Crete whom he was destined to destroy — “and, by death, destroyed him that had the power of death, that is the devil; and delivered them who, through fear of death, have all their life-time been subject to bondage.” He shared our lot, though He did not share our sinfulness. Mighty as God, yet weak and frail as man; able, on the one hand, to wield and use infinite power, and, on the other, to suit Himself to the weakest and feeblest of his brethren. “Such a High Priest became us.”
I. The Nature of this Freedom. — It is not freedom to do as we like. That were not liberty, but licence. To be emancipated from all rule and law would be impossible in a well-ordered world, and incompatible with the well-being of others. But the Son sets us free from the unnatural conditions into which sin has brought us; so that we, “being delivered from the fear of our enemies, may serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness all the days of our life.”
We are free from the imputation of Adam’s sin; because He as the second Adam has borne it away. Free from the lash of a broken law; because He has paid the penalty, and met its last demands. Free from the weary gnawing of remorse; because He has forgiven us our sins, and blotted them out of his book, and cast them behind his back for ever. Free from the hopeless endeavour to weave for ourselves a robe of stainless righteousness; because He gives us his own, as Jonathan exchanged his apparel with David. Free from the bondage of corruption; the chains of which have been struck ofif by his mighty hand. Free from the very love of sin; so that its least breath or approach is instantly shrivelled before those habits of woven fire with which He arrays the soul. Free from the dread of death; because He has died. Free from the whole entail of evil; except those limitations and failures which must ever weaken the strength of our purpose and lower the temperature of our motives, compelling us to apply constantly for daily cleansing and acceptance through his flawless righteousness.
We do not want more than this. The swallow, with a broken wing, seeks not liberty to feed on carrion; but only to be able to mount again into the sunny air, which is its native sphere. And the soul which is athirst for God and holiness asks for no other freedom than that it should be able to pursue its divine quest unhindered by the restraints of sin.
II. The Means of this Freedom. — “The truth shall make you free.” The only-begotten Son speaks of truth because He was full of truth, and truth came by Him (John i. 14, 17). And from this point the Light of the world repeats often this great word — ^ru//i (viii. 32, 40, 44, 45, 46; xiv. 6; xvi. 13; xvii. 19; xviii. y). When He speaks of truth, He means the inner heart of things; their essence and kernel; that panorama of the unseen and eternal which lay before his eye in open vision.
Truth always frees. — The villager will no longer dread to pass some haunted spot when he learns the truth that there are no such things as fays or goblifis. The slave girl will no longer remain in the house of her cruel oppressor when she discovers that he has no longer any claim on her; because some time ago the Act of Emancipation was passed, though the tidings of it have been carefully concealed. The timid soul will no longer question whether it may not have committed the unpardonable sin, when it is taught that that very fear is proof positive that it has never entered this awful state. The dying will be free from all fear, if they realize the truth that the wasp has lost its sting, the viper its fangs, the roaring lion its teeth; and that the iron gate will open of its own accord.
So, when the Lord Jesus reveals the truth of all that He has done for us — that in Him we are accepted and triumphant; that through Him we sit in heavenly places with Satan beneath our feet; that from Him we are equipped with power to tread on serpents, and scorpions, and all the power of the enemy — then the whole aspect of our life alters; we see our position, and we take it; we learn our power, and we use it; we realize that we are free, and as such we begin to act. Knowing that we have the right to walk the waves, we step out on them in faith, and find them as rock beneath our tread. Acting by faith in the truth revealed to us, we discover that it is so. Things are not what they seem. We think we are powerless and helpless, and destined to be overcome; but, if we would venture out on Christ’s revealed truth, and dare to live by faith, and not by sight, we should discover that all the world is new, and life is ours, with victory and sweetness and power, such as we have never known or dreamt of.
III. The Results of this Freedom. — It is the prerogative of the son; and if you rise up from the chains of the prison to the freedom and joy of the Father’s house, if you are no longer entangled with the yoke of bondage, it is a sign that you, too, are no longer a servant, but a son; that, by a blessed act of regeneration, you have passed from the one to the other, from death to life. The moment of soul-emancipation witnesses to the moment of regeneration and adoption. And this again attests that there shall be no going out any more for ever.
“The Son abideth ever in the house “; and the sons abide there for ever, too. Hagar and Ishmael are cast out; but Isaac, the divinely-given Laughter, stays in the home for ever. The child can never cease to be a child. It may sin, and grow cold, and cause pangs of anguish to hearts which would give themselves to save it, but it is a child still, to be brought back through seas of sorrow and fires of pain; it may wander into the far country and waste its years, but it will certainly return home, never to go forth again.
There are many among us who are really in a much better position than they have any conception of. They are children; but they do not know it. They shall never perish; but they fail to realize it. They are in the place of power; but their eyes are blinded and they cannot see it. Oh that such would cry for the heavenly eyesalve, that the eyes of their heart may be enlightened to know “the hope of his calling, the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and the exceeding greatness of his power toward them that believe “! And, as the Spirit of Truth shall lead them into all the truth, their freedom shall increase with their knowledge in ever-widening circles.